Trail of Dead
by muckraker
Summary: A proper knight should practice mercy toward his enemies, which is harder than it sounds. SuzakuLelouch, written for springkink, rated for ambiguous sex.


**Trail of Dead**

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_Written for springkink on LiveJournal, even though this isn't really very kinky at all; prompt: amnesia, rough sex, using one's partner - Lelouch didn't seem to understand why he was always so angry, but he never turned him away__. And yes, I totally lifted that scene from the R2 picture drama, so disclaimer there. ffnet, you're evil for how you toy with my formatting. Also, um, feel free to comment. I don't bite, lol.  
_

* * *

Britannia introduced its Knight of Seven with an easy, unthinking cruelty that made the young boy in Suzaku flinch and flush with shame. Charles was delighted with his new dog, his pet demon, and he broadcasted it on every news channel that Britannia owned, rubbing it in the world's face with malicious glee. And Suzaku knelt before them all and pledged his allegiance, his head bowed and his hand over his heart. The regalia felt like a caparison to have been draped over the back of a horse striding purposefully into battle, his spine breaking under the weight of lance and armor and soldier.

The duties of a knight include: protection of the weak, dedication to general welfare for all, munificence, pride, loyalty, unwavering love for Britannia and her rulers. In the fine print: absolute servitude, surrender of personal ideals, willingness to slaughter the innocent. Gloria, gloria. All hail.

"Hmm, _you_ caught Zero?" Gino said when he first met Suzaku, his eyes warm and his smile playful, teasing. "How was that?"

"It was...." Suzaku pressed his lips together. "Unexpected," he said. He thought maybe he should try to smile, but he felt very heavy.

Gino beamed at him and took his hand. "Congratulations," he said, without irony.

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* * *

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He needed to stop thinking about it. It was silly to agonize over. Because what was hate, anyway, but another kind of love? Fire was fire, and it still burned.

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* * *

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His new status meant very little, in the grand scheme of things. It was just like the military, clothed in pomp and circumstance, with more useless flourish, filtered through more rhetoric and propaganda. His new quarters were private and well-furnished, trimmed in deep, royal blue and gold, and he should have been encouraged by the improvement, but mostly, he wanted to sleep.

Nothing changed after he became a real knight. The Black Knights were not absolved. Zero's legacy was still there, even if he wasn't. Britannia did not stop its tyranny. No one changed their ways or came back to life. The world did not right itself. _His_ life changed: he attended meetings and he theoretically had a say in things, but it was still Britannia and he was still completely, irrevocably Japanese. He only lived in the Britannian motherland for two weeks, getting fitted for his uniforms and being addressed by _Sir_ and _Lord_, before he received a summons to report to His Highness Schneizel's flagship, that he was being deployed into battle against the E.U.

"The Second Prince formally requests our assistance," Gino said, leaning into his doorway. "He says he's eager to see your performance." He bounced on the balls of his feet, his happy excitement rolling off him in waves.

"He's seen me fight," Suzaku muttered as he tugged on his gloves.

"That was ages ago, and fighting terrorists is completely different." Gino winked at him. "Come on, ace, we all want to see you in action. It sounds like your Knightmare has an upgrade, too."

Suzaku protested weakly that there were records of his combat history, but Gino ignored him and started off toward the hangar, and Suzaku broke into a half-jog to keep up. He didn't make the point that the only difference was that they would probably win this fight.

He nearly collided with Cecile as they both rounded the same corner. She gave a little squeak of surprise and dropped her clipboard. He caught it before the papers could flutter to the floor and stammered an apology, but she waved it away. "We're entering Portuguese airspace in twenty minutes, so you need to hurry. Lloyd has everything you need." She beamed at him and folded him into a quick, tight hug and whispered, "Do your best," before she turned him forcibly and pushed him after Gino.

The flight suit was different. Its lines traced his body in new, uneasy ways, and lightly constricted his breathing like his old one never did. It made him nervous. His heartbeat was loud in his ears as he started toward the rearing hulk of white and gold that was the Lancelot. He barely heard Lloyd shouting his name, but he caught the key in midair when Lloyd threw it.

"Be gentle with it, my Lord," Lloyd called, and grinned. At his feet, Arthur twined between his legs. Suzaku nodded faintly.

As he slid into the cockpit, his stomach twisted. This small space, where he had failed his princess in the worst way, hunted Zero down with murder in his heart and finally, finally dragged Lelouch, scuffed and bloody and bound, back to face the Emperor...after everything, it still felt like home. It felt like a place he belonged and he knew it, could sense himself here in a way that he never could with his feet on the ground and a gun in his hand, not even with hate burning a hole in his heart.

Vertigo was a strange thing, encased in six tons of metal. Suzaku closed his eyes and let himself fall toward the deep expanse of the sea and its jetsam of an armada, its artillery leveling its sights on him. The sky was a vivid, bloody afterimage seared into his eyes, and the wind roared past, deafening, a vicious threat to consume him whole.

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* * *

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(Rewind, delete. Start again.)

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* * *

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He woke to the soft strains of a gentle nocturne for piano, sweet and high and floating through the open doorway. Sunlight played across the sofa's upholstery in front of his face, and he stretched and breathed the warm, familiar smells of clean laundry and fresh bread.

"You're awake."

He jerked and sat up hastily, rubbing at his eyes. "Sorry, Nunnally. That was rude." He tugged at his shirt and tried futilely to smooth his hair. "I didn't mean to fall asleep." He felt very stupid and slow, the edges of a hazy dream slipping away from him. It was, he thought, something having to do the years before Britannia swept into his home. Something about languid Japanese summers, the heady scent of flowers and the sea.

"It's fine," she said, her voice soft. "Brother said that your work must be hard lately." She laced her fingers in her lap. "And this is your home, too, Suzaku. Until you leave, this is your home." She smiled a little and inclined her head. "So you may sleep if you're tired."

He gave a helpless laugh. "I'm sorry. It's still--rude. Is there anything I can...." He focused on the table: there were plates before, he remembered, delicate little sweet biscuits and teacups, but the table was clean, now. A sheepish blush crept up his neck, and he nervously fluffed the sofa's pillow.

"Sayoko is getting more tea," Nunnally reassured him. "It's all right. And Brother is in there." She nodded toward the doorway. Suzaku looked, and let out his breath in a surprised little _ah_. "He's practicing," she said confidentially. "Even if he says he's just bored."

He bit his lip and listened: the melody was lovely and sad, a complex twine of notes and rhythm. He could very easily imagine Lelouch's concentration and the elegant spread of his fingers. "How long has he played?"

"For as long as I can remember. Mother wanted him to learn."

"Oh." It seemed obvious. As if Lelouch would have learned to do anything else, anything less serene and refined than playing the piano. "He does have very nice hands," he admitted.

"Suzaku has nice hands," she replied, irrationally, and smiled. She closed her fingers over his. He looked at her fine nails and brushed his thumb over her fingers, feeling her bones fine like a small bird's. He didn't protest that his hands were clumsy and rough, but she added, "They're very kind hands."

He squeezed her fingers and laid his head down on the couch's armrest and listened to Lelouch play, the music gentle and cyclical, rising and falling like wings. Something twisted in his chest. "Suzaku," Nunnally finally whispered. "Are you all right?"

He thought of the suffocating whirlwind of this war, how precious these moments were, now that they could go up in flames. And, more than anything, Lelouch and his guarded eyes, the intensity he could not hide and the awful feeling that something was moving that Suzaku could not see. _What are you doing_, he wanted to ask. _Tell me_, he wanted to plead. He wanted to believe that his heart should not be hurting. "Yeah," he said, and closed his eyes. "I'm all right, Nunnally."

She tugged her fingers out of his grip and trailed her hand up his shoulder, his neck, and finally laid it on his head. She gently brushed his bangs off his forehead. "You can sleep if you're tired," she said. "We'll be here when you wake up."

He dozed, lulled by the drift of her fingers through his hair and Lelouch's music, and the anxiety in his gut unclenched a little and he felt for a moment a huge, unbridled gratitude deep and boundless as the sky.

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* * *

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"Do you hate me yet?" Lelouch spoke as though he was not wearing a straitjacket, as though he was not going to meet his father and receive a death sentence. His back was straight, his head held high, his eyes heavy-lidded. Suzaku tightened his grip on Lelouch's upper arm and did not answer. Their steps echoed around them. "Do you want to cause me all the pain you've ever known?" Lelouch slid his eyes over to look at him, and the gleam of the geass was sick and unsettling.

"Shut up," Suzaku said, and Lelouch's mouth curved into a wry smile. Suzaku glared at the awesome doorway ahead, his jaw clenched. _That wasn't a victory_, he didn't say. _You haven't won anything. _There was a great, aching deadness in his chest, a feeling so heavy that he thought he would waver, succumb to nausea and collapse, throwing up until there was nothing left. He let go, detached himself from the knowledge that he held his friend prisoner--his first friend, his best friend--and thought instead of Euphie. He clung to his memory of her and her weak smile, her cold fingers, her blood. His vision narrowed to a point directly before him, and he drew a deep breath.

The throne room sang with tension, their path lit from far above. The Emperor waited, and his silence was great and massive.

Lelouch walked toward his father, proud and defiant, confident. Charles looked like a demon in the shadows, his presence bursting with the sickness of Britannia. His eyes glittered, and Suzaku felt Lelouch go rigid with anger; from the corner of his eye, he saw the twist of Lelouch's mouth, his murderous, righteous glare. His dignity was so important to him. Suzaku gritted his teeth and reached up, grabbed a fistful of Lelouch's hair, and knelt, driving Lelouch's face into the floor.

(An abbreviated list of things he wished he'd said to Lelouch: _I wanted to believe in you. I loved you so much. Why wasn't this enough?_

And also: _No, I don't hate you. Not yet._)

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* * *

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The sky was an endless, forever high-noon blue when the Portuguese Armed Forces surrendered to Britannia, two hours and forty-five minutes after three Knights of Rounds entered the battle. Suzaku shaded his eyes and peered after the supply carrier and its slow progress over the battlefield. Beside him, Anya reached up her camera phone and snapped a picture of the horizon, the glittering surface of the waves and the dip and wheel of gulls as they slowly flapped back into warm, Mediterranean air that reeked of electricity and gun smoke. On the beach below, bodies ebbed with the surf, the sand stained an ugly rust.

"That was awfully useless," she murmured.

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* * *

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Four months after Zero fell, Suzaku's resolve broke.

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* * *

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He ran across Ashford's campus in the dark, a light, wintry rain misting his face. His footsteps pounded down the pavement, the sneakers strange to his feet after so long. The clubhouse was dark, and he panted raggedly before its doors, hands on his knees and unpleasant wet dripping coldly down his back. He pulled at his shirt where it stuck to his skin and peered at the dark windows. This was stupid, presumptuous and conceited. This Lelouch was supposed to be an alien creature, not a prince but a civilian and nothing more. (And, more than than anything, never was he Suzaku's friend.) Suzaku straightened and leaned back against a pillar, his heart pounding so hard, and the rain hissed down around him in a wash of white noise.

The door opened, creased into darkness, and Lelouch looked at him without surprise, tilting his head to the side in perfect rendition of himself before Zero tore him apart. "It's been a while," he murmured, giving Suzaku an appraising look, and his voice was the same and his eyes were the same and he was himself and for once, he was not lying. He reached out from the darkness of the foyer, and his hand was delicate and pale in the night air.

Suzaku stared at his hand as if it was a snake. He half-expected Lelouch to lunge for his throat, try to claw out his eyes. Pull a gun from his jeans and level it at Suzaku's face. He pushed his wet hair out of his eyes, still breathing hard, and focused on Lelouch's mouth and his eyes where they were sheltered by darkness. Lelouch's lips quirked up into a smile and he lifted his hand and brushed his fingers over Suzaku's cheek. "Welcome back," he said.

_That's all in the past. You can regret as much as you want afterwards._

_How naïve._

He pushed Lelouch's hand away and stepped forward, shoved Lelouch back inside and pushed him against the closed door. His fingers dug into the soft flesh of Lelouch's sides and his breath came fast and harsh, panted against Lelouch's shoulder. Lelouch folded his arms around Suzaku's neck, completely uncaring that Suzaku was soaking wet and cold, and leaned into it, tilting his head back. Suzaku squeezed his eyes shut and tried not to remember Lelouch screaming _traitor, traitor_. Lelouch's fingers traced over his shoulders, the touch gentle. His hand found its way to the nape of Suzaku's neck and stroked over his hair.

"It's all right," Lelouch said softly. Suzaku tried to swallow back a hot, sick wash of anger, and he gagged. Lelouch pushed him back, his face all innocent concern. "It's all right," he said again. He pressed a kiss to the corner of Suzaku's mouth and murmured, "You're home."

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* * *

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It felt a lot like falling.

Anger spilling out of him like fire, more anger than he thought he could ever hold, and it was sick and deadly like poison, veining the edges of his vision in darkness and cracks, as though he was made of glass. Lelouch was all jagged edges, sharp and intense and refractions into forever, and the pale line of his throat was stark in the darkness, the arch of his back a lovely curve against Suzaku's fingers. He gasped words against Suzaku's mouth, his long, elegant hands grasping at anything he could reach, and Suzaku pulled him close and poured out his old, stagnant grief and rage and it was like vertigo, falling into each other without gravity but in another sort of blind, furious tempest.

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* * *

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When he shook himself awake at 6:00 am, the sky was lightening to a stormy grey, and he could see the marks on Lelouch's skin. Bruises flowered at the thin skin of his wrists, in ugly splotches over his throat, peeking from the drape of sheets over his sides. Suzaku felt sick. He curled over his knees and swallowed back his disgust, his hands fisted in his hair.

He washed and dressed as quickly as he could and left before he could meet the Agency spy, stepping out into the dreary morning and its sluggish, cold rain.

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* * *

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He only tried once after that with any real spirit.

There were some things he couldn't help, like his unconscious reflexes and his natural instinct for moving with the land-spinners and float unit, how he could feel his way through terrain with nothing but the tension humming up through his hands and feet, or the fact that Schneizel's troops were largely impeccable, second only to Cornelia's elite soldiers in prowess if not loyalty, and they backed him up as though he was a commanding officer that they respected. Or the fact that the E.U. was weaker than they wanted to believe and had nothing that could compare to Britannia's military force.

"It makes you feel a little bad, doesn't it?" Gino remarked. "You have to wonder why they're resisting at all."

In the end, though, there were some things he could help. Like burning through his energy filler faster than anything and distancing himself from the Avalon so that no one could perform an emergency resupply. Or fumbling and letting the VARIS fall into the rocky surf. Or losing contact with the Avalon altogether, which was easier than anyone might think. Or moving faster than his backup and losing them in the maze of ravines and cliffs where the enemy had stationed its pathetically obvious reserve troops and letting them surround him.

With the Lancelot's fact-spheres shutting down, beeping shrilly that there was a critical number of shells and missiles locked onto his position, that danger and death were imminent and closing in faster than was advisable, with all his displays going deep, bloody red, he felt a fierce, savage glee and an incredibly new sensation of having finally, finally won against Zero, against Lelouch.

And when he woke later, he was lying on the ground, his arm twisted painfully beneath him, and he was surrounded by ragged, smoking metal, the remnants of tanks and old, pirated Knightmare frames, the bodies of their gunmen and pilots lying broken around them, and the Lancelot was dirty and wrecked and he only had the vaguest recollection of what his intentions might have been.

Things after that were hazy, as he dragged himself up with the help of undergrowth and discovered that his ankle was sprained, too, and he had to hobble carefully back through trees bent and splintered, clutching his arm to his side. He didn't care enough to make his steps quiet or to work toward open clearings, and it was a long hour before a Sutherland nearly ran him over. The pilot yelped, "My Lord!" with the edge of something that probably wasn't sympathy, and Suzaku put his weight on one trembling leg and told him where the Lancelot was, and then he blacked out.

It turned out his arm was broken, which was (according to Gino), kind of embarrassing. Cecile fussed over him and shone a light in his eyes while he was still groggy and flat on his back, and then she declared that he had a concussion and sat down herself and dabbed at his scrapes, her eyes so worried that guilt welled up in him like nausea. The Lancelot had to be recovered and airlifted back to the Avalon, they told him, and Lloyd didn't visit, but sent a very annoyed note about the cat, which Cecile said was his way of being worried, too.

"Suzaku," she said quietly, when they were finally alone. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine." He tried to give her an encouraging smile. "Everyone is taking care of me. I'm sorry to have done this--" he lifted his arm, now in a sling "--when everyone needs me. Maybe Lloyd can help me with the Lancelot, and--"

"_No._" Her voice was sharp with barely-concealed fury, and he flinched. "You're not going to pilot a Knightmare one-handed. You're not going to fight at all until you heal." Her eyes were horrible and cold, and he couldn't meet her gaze. After a long, tense moment, she narrowed her eyes and lifted her chin. "Forgive me, my Lord," she said coolly, "but what were you thinking?"

He felt his false little smile strain. "Sorry?"

She gave him a long look, and then she stood. "I formally request that the Knight of Seven remember his duties as a leader," she said. "Preferably _before_ he attempts flamboyant suicide." She turned and exited without another word, and he was left with the guilty ache in his chest and the idea that he had taken a few things for granted, and he wanted very badly to laugh until he cried.

Later, Anya brought him chocolate.

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* * *

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The way his inaction went was this: he spent the first week or so with the honor of observing the battle from the Avalon's helm at the Second Prince's side, where explosions were reduced to anonymous flares on the displays, an alert that a unit was lost, and Schneizel leaned into his laced fingers and gave shrewd orders to split, retreat, surround, destroy. After that, there was a careful stalemate around the border of Austria, and no one fought for two weeks and he prowled the ship, restless and miserable. Gino and Anya left for the motherland to report progress to the Emperor, promising to be back in a few days, and he was alone again. Everyone ignored him for a while, until Lloyd finished his upgrades to the Lancelot and decided that things were getting boring.

"I won't allow it!" Cecile made a fist, and Lloyd skipped out of reach and hid behind Suzaku.

"I did pilot it with a gunshot wound," he reminded her.

"A gunshot wound that missed, and it wasn't your arm."

"I can wear a brace." He gave her a despairing look. "It's been four weeks."

"And it was a very clean break!" Lloyd piped up from behind Suzaku's shoulder. Cecile's brow knit and she looked at Suzaku for a long time without saying anything. After a pause, Lloyd added, "You know, he could just order you to let him go."

Suzaku muttered, "Not helping."

Cecile clenched her fist more tightly and put on one of her alarming smiles that was sweet and gracious and all teeth. "Well then, Professor, if I'm really so _inconsequential_ as all that, then perhaps you need a second opinion. If His Highness says it's all right, then my Lord can go off and get himself killed all he wants."

Schneizel gave them a mild look over his aristocratic nose, looking as though he was observing a rather bizarre domestic dispute, and he allowed that the Knight of Seven had probably healed long enough and it was safe for him to return to the battlefield, provided he wasn't reckless. Afterward, Suzaku found Cecile and uneasily tried to reassure her that he was fine and that nothing would happen to him. He couldn't very well tell her that there was something within him that intensified his survival instinct into an awful, alien thing that he couldn't refuse or fight, and she didn't look as though she really believed him, but she put her hand on his shoulder and told him to be careful, anyway.

In the weeks that he had lost, the E.U.'s western front was pushed back a thousand miles into Russia, and Schneizel was waging a patient war of attrition while pocket guerilla groups in the mountains surfaced and went out in little blazes of glory. Gino told Suzaku that everyone's surrender was probably imminent, so there wasn't much need for him anyway. Lloyd politely ignored Gino and told Suzaku that if the Lancelot Conquista took any damage in its first battle, the Rounds would have another empty position to fill.

He learned that every language in the world has its own way of screaming _Britannian bastard,_ the same way that every language in the world has its own expressions of fear and hate. It only took a few more days of fighting with Schneizel's army, long enough for him to remember the rhythm of the Knightmare, to realize that each also had its own word for him. Chiort, duivel, diable, traditore. He learned the cadence of his name accented with Spanish, French, Russian, heavy with a taint of loathing.

He pulled a small girl from the rubble of a village. He smoothed her tangled hair and carefully repositioned her, watching for her hitched breath, a flash of agony on her pale face. She smeared dirt and blood across his immaculate whites and focused on his face and cried. He thought later, absently, that perhaps he should have prayed for her, this wretched little survivor caught between two powers that could do nothing but try to rip each other to pieces. He told her that things were all right, that now she was safe.

"Demon!" she screamed, tears streaking the dirt on her cheeks. "Murderer! I'll never forgive you!"

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* * *

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"Hey, Suzaku," Gino said finally. "Do you hate Zero?"

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* * *

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Lelouch said very few things he didn't mean, even when he lied. And sometimes the things he meant weren't really the ones he said, but the ones he didn't say, the things he said with the slant of his eyes and the line of his mouth, the tone of his voice. And so when Lelouch opened the door and said, "Surprise," very obviously not surprised at all, Suzaku felt a stab of fear that perhaps Lelouch was, again, cleverer than anyone expected him to be, and his sorceress had reappeared and kissed him back to life.

"Are you angry?" Lelouch said, his voice even, neutral.

Suzaku studied his face. "Are you?" he ventured, his muscles tense. A cold wind cut across Ashford's campus, heavy with the promise of snow, but he didn't move.

"Not particularly," Lelouch replied, and Suzaku relaxed a little. Lelouch peered at his face. "You were rather odd, earlier," he said slowly, as if he meant hours or days, rather than weeks and months. He leaned against the doorway and studied Suzaku's face, and suddenly he looked very much like Schneizel in his battleship, ordering death and triumph. "Are you all right?" he said.

Suzaku swallowed hard. "Yeah," he said faintly. "I've been kind of tired."

Something softened around Lelouch's eyes, but he did not smile. "Do you want to come in?" he murmured. "Or did you come here intending to haunt the doorstep?" He stepped back without waiting for an answer, and Suzaku dumbly followed him into the darkness.

Was this Lelouch more honest, he wondered. Were the truths he said somehow more true, drugged into believing lies as he was? He wished he had the courage to ask about Euphie, or Marianne. Zero-Lelouch had a familiar curtain that slid over his face, this identity of Lelouch Lamperouge that hid everything and was conscious of hiding it, careful. Very careful. Suzaku was not used to this new innocence. Now-Lelouch halted as he walked, darting a puzzled glance over his shoulder, as though he expected to see someone there, or on the staircase, or in his bedroom. Suzaku was quiet, watching Lelouch's back. He could see now a very many things that before he willfully chose to ignore: Zero's hands, for instance, or the narrow set of Zero's shoulders. He supposed there were some things Lelouch couldn't help, either.

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* * *

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"Is it difficult, lately?" Lelouch looked at him sideways, his face expressionless. Suzaku hesitated and didn't answer. The wind moaned lowly beyond the fine French windows. Lelouch watched him for a long moment, and finally, he said, "They're trying to make you into a martyr. You don't have to let them."

Suzaku struggled against acknowledgment of fact, indication of his submission. Finally, he settled on, "It doesn't matter what they're trying to do."

Lelouch's mouth angled down at this, and he frowned. Suzaku felt a weak, desperate urge to change the subject, throw out a wild change in conversation like _Do you still practice the piano because I would really, really like to hear you play, right now,_ even though it was probably edging toward midnight. Or _Do you actually cook breakfast now,_ something stupid.

"People are so weak," Lelouch murmured. "They're letting themselves be weak." His eyes slid over to Suzaku's. "They worship Zero in the ghettos, did you know?" Suzaku stopped breathing. "The brainless masses," Lelouch went on, undeterred, "have made Zero into their saint. They rely on their memories of Zero and Japan as it was before to give them hope. They're playing into expectations." He took a sip of tea and his lips curved in a mirthless smile. "No one has done anything to stop the distribution of Refrain, after all."

Suzaku took a breath, and another. This was not a conversation he wanted to have. He did not want to walk this fine, dangerous line. "Do you agree with Britannia?" he said, forcing the words out. "Do you think what they're doing is right?" He felt weightless, his stomach seized with anxiety. He gritted his teeth and resisted, made himself silent, that dead part of his chest aching again.

A ghost flickered across Lelouch's face, and his brittle smile faded. His brow knit. "No," he said thoughtfully, a note of surprise to his voice as though it was the first time he had heard himself say so, like it was someone else's curious sentiment, fresh and new, its origins unknown. "No, I don't."

Suzaku closed his eyes and waited to hear Zero speak. He was faster. He would always be faster. He would be able to hear the smirk in Lelouch's voice, could lunge and grab him, pin him to the counter, cover his damned eye, and wait for the Intelligence Agency to come and arrest him. Lelouch would never have a chance. He wouldn't be able to kill anyone else in cold blood, twist anyone else's heart to his will, burn the whole, murderous world down around him in a storm of fire. There was nothing he would be able to say to save himself, to prove his innocence before them all. Suzaku curled his hands into fists.

He did not breathe when Lelouch's hands slid up his jaw. Lelouch turned his face, kissing him first on one cheek, then the other. His hands gentle, his lips dry. The gesture was formal and royal, full of benediction, of forgiveness.

"I'm sorry," Lelouch said quietly. "Don't give up."

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* * *

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And later: "Be careful," Lelouch warned, his breath warm against the line of Suzaku's jaw. "Don't wake Rolo." Suzaku felt in turns giddy and ill at this, this guileless admission of the fact that Lelouch had sent his own precious moments up in flames, a great conflagration of sorrow and hate. He kissed Lelouch in a clumsy knock of noses and teeth, fumbled at the buttons of Lelouch's shirt, and finally pulled back to better see what he was doing.

"You missed me," Lelouch said smugly, brushing his lips over Suzaku's forehead. Buttons pulled free, finally, and Suzaku slid his hand over Lelouch's mouth and pressed himself close, scraping his teeth against the line of Lelouch's neck. His other hand skimmed over the smooth plane of Lelouch's chest and went lower, and then Lelouch moaned, his lips kissing Suzaku's fingers. There was a certain satisfaction to be had from taking away from Lelouch's articulate nature, his strongest asset. His damnable charisma, his voice and his hands calling for uprising and vengeance, these things that Suzaku would sooner destroy than not.

_It's fine to feel hate,_ Lelouch had told him, warmth and comfort in his beguiling voice. _I don't intend to head back._

The world was burning. He breathed smoke, could taste dust and sweat. Lelouch slid his hands down Suzaku's back, his fingers tracing the edges of muscle and scar, and in the darkness, there was a wicked gleam to his eyes.

_It's naïve for me to feel attached to you,_ Zero had snarled.

Suzaku pressed his forehead to Lelouch's chest and his breath came in pants (sobs) and Lelouch's hands moved like wings in the shadows and there were words close to his ear, promising, promising. He thought, incongruously, of sunlight and a lonely, complex song, and he was falling again, hearing nothing but his blood roaring, feeling nothing but his arms full of fire.


End file.
